Blood Brothers
by ThatClutzsarahh
Summary: Mycroft must live with what he's done. Post Reichenbach.


**So welcome! This is my first Sherlock fic. After watching and watching and watching the series over and over again, i had to write something. And I had to start somewhere. So I started here, with Angst. Forgive me for my spelling mistakes.**

**I own only the typos**

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><p>He hadn't been there when it happened. But he was there for the aftermath.<p>

Stone cold Mycroft Holmes, with all his stone skin and icy heart let the sound of his footsteps echoing the tile morgue walls slowly crack the stone he'd become made of. The hallway was longer than he remembered as he had counted his steps the last visit, and he was already over the limit. He could reason his strides were shorter, or the hallway somehow lengthened, but at the moment all thoughts were muted by the sound of his stony heart beating heavily in his ears.

The game he plays for a living is dangerous, lives lost everyday for his "causes", his face always hidden behind the scenes. He is the British government, faceless, emotionless, soulless. There were always consequences to his actions, also unintended deaths, unintentional casualties. He hadn't realized that all those battles, all those deaths, the men-they were someone's brother. Related. Family. Brothers.

Brothers.

He could take Molly's word for it. But he didn't. He pulled up the video footage of the cameras of the morgue. He watched his brother's body come in. He watched it being dumped onto the slab. He watched Molly strip him from his clothes and wash away the blood from his curls gently. Mycroft watched the darkened water swirl down by his brother's feet, like a deep spiraling tunnel of red wine in a black and white film. He watched Molly put his body in the freezer, before she slid down the side of the steel and wept herself. He turned it off then.

Yet still it wasn't enough. Masochist he was, he could not believe that this war, unintentional and unplanned certainly ended horribly wrong, and he could directly be blamed for the death-the suicide of his brother. And what was worse, he thought as he neared the end of the longest hallway in the world, is that he did not understand his brother's motives. He always understood the motives. But this he did not. As Mycroft, ice man extraordinaire pushed aside the doors to the morgue he could feel his heart clench from the warmth that was slowly flooding him. Molly was there, the blathering girl, and startled as he entered.

She knew he would arrive. Mycroft Holmes in his bony stance would sweep into the morgue like it were a grand ball, a face masked and dressed to the nines, cane resting across his two hands. But she was unprepared for _this,_ for Mycroft to look so _human. _He stood there in the morgue looking washed to sea, a wet dog, a boy whose stepped on a piece of glass and has cut his foot open. His eyes wide, red rimmed, mouth agape, as if breathing was physically painful for him to do. Molly understood instantly, wordlessly, and she turned to lead him to the exam room.

Scraping steel wheels and the clatter of metal cut into the heavy silence of the room. The thick lump in his throat he hadn't noticed before became unbearably heavy and he gasped for air. If he were an emotional man, it would be a sob, but since he was not, he concluded it wasn't much of anything. With a pertinent, silent look, he gazed at Molly. She scurried away without so much as a word, silently leaving the white washed room and taking the air out with her. He never knew how stale the morgue's air was until he was left to stand there in the silence.

The black mop of hair was slicked back, away from a face with cheekbones too high and eyes too small. Dark lashes swept pale cheeks and a mouth forever twisted in a frown was relaxed, easy. Sherlock looked...settled. Mycroft tried to inhale, but found his breath caught off so he exhaled instead and reached forward, forward to his _baby_ brother.

His hands trembled.

Ice Man Mycroft, faceless, ageless, emotionless government man trembles as he reaches for his only connection to the world. Sherlock Holmes, nine year old pirate, ten year old dinosaur, Sherlock Holmes, kitchen disaster, deviously clever, Sherlock Holmes, his first flat mate, best mate, only _mate_ is lying dead on a table in front of him. He'd been told, many a times, by people he's burned, hurt, broken, that one day, someone really close would die and he would ache the way they do. But Sherlock Holmes was invincible, super human, and Mycroft had nothing to worry about because the only one who could ever put his brother on a slab was himself and he knew that.

Moriarty knew that too.

Mycroft put him there. Mycroft put him there. _I put him here_. The words echoed around, around and around his head as he stared at his brother. Gone were the two a.m violin concerts, gone was the dramatic eccentric outfits, gone were the long words and rambling conversations, gone gone gone was his only _friend._ Moriarty had no idea the _damage _he was doing, doing to someone other than Sherlock. Yet Mycroft feels as if Moriarty knew exactly what he was doing, breaking him down. The ultimate hand of power. Moriarty brought England to it's knees.

Quite literally.

Mycroft fell, but didn't hear anything. Cane clattering to the floor near him, his posh pants bunched up as he hit the ground, his back rolling and hands spreading out to catch himself. If only the world could see him like this, the great Mycroft Holmes reduced to his knees, the floor, a place where he brought so many people before him. Mycroft himself was reduced to begging, begging on the floor for his brother to come back. The floor couldn't have felt harder underneath his fingers as he tried to flex, to grasp something, _anything_, but all he got was air. Without Sherlock, he too, was sinking. Moriarty's damage was more extensive then he could have ever imagined.

"I'm so sorry, little Brother," he whispers.

He spends all his time at the Diogenes Club, sitting in the deep leather chair with a cup shaking on his knee. His fingers are steady, folded over each other. His tea cup is empty, and has been for the last twenty minutes, the tea cart not around for another fifteen. Mycroft had seen the paper, he'd read the article. He saw his words, word for word in black and white print and, if his heart hadn't died with Sherlock, it would have broken again, withering away till it was as black as his soul. His words stung him, bit at him, giant great white shark bites that have torn him apart, open and out. He'd sob if he could, but the silence saved him from doing so.

He wouldn't go to the funeral.

He wouldn't go see the grave.

For him, it would make it all so real, so true. For him, Mycroft Holmes, he would really lose his younger brother, truthfully, honestly. By watching them lower the lacquered casket into dark soil, a wreath of flowers and his brother's portrait, the sound of the crying violin and his mother, _their_ mother sitting in her black outfit with her tall black hat, feathers and veil shading those eyes, those eyes his brother inherited-sharp. He couldn't go. He wouldn't go. And there was no way he'd stand at the black stone grave, _Sherlock Holmes_ scribbled into and drop flowers at his brothers feet. That would make him actually human. Mycroft refuses to be human. He _refuses_ to care. Caring was never an advantage.

Except when it came to Moriarty. Mycroft cared about Moriarty's information, enough to get Sherlock killed.

And how could he forgive himself for it now?

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><p>OKay, gentle, don't shoot. What do you think?<p> 


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